Trying to buy an election

Friday

Mar 21, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 21, 2014 at 9:24 AM

As he keeps a busy schedule of fundraisers, President Barack Obama is busy working on the 2014 midterm elections in another way: He's looking to buy votes with a series of proposals and actions that risk damaging the economy for the sake of political gain.

As he keeps a busy schedule of fundraisers, President Barack Obama is busy working on the 2014 midterm elections in another way: He's looking to buy votes with a series of proposals and actions that risk damaging the economy for the sake of political gain.

An example was his order last week that the Department of Labor change regulations so that millions more employees will be eligible for overtime. The move panders to workers by promising the ability to earn time-and-a-half pay with no downside.

But business groups immediately criticized the significant revision of labor rules as a job killer. The National Retail Federation, whose members will be greatly affected by the change, said it "would have a significant job-killing effect," because employers would be faced with "uncertainty, administrative burdens and costs that are contrary to the goal of job creation."

The group also pulled no punches on why it thinks Obama raised the issue now: "We are skeptical of the politics of the proposal and certainly of the timing. ... We think this is politically motivated," it said.

Unlike Obama's drive to raise the federal minimum wage, which would require action by Congress, a change in overtime rules can be enacted by administrative action alone - the type of sweeping unilateral move that's become a hallmark of the Obama presidency. It also follows on a major theme of his State of the Union address, when he praised businesses that have given raises to workers and called on others to do so.

But in pushing for more overtime pay and for a $10-plus minimum hourly wage, Obama and his backers either misunderstand or mislead on the power of government to issue top-down directives to the private sector. In the top-down, government-run Obama worldview, such sweeping directives benefit working-class families by putting more money in their pockets, while everything else remains the same. In reality, businesses take into account every economic condition and adjust accordingly.

Rather than allowing workers to rack up overtime, they'll keep them from working any more than 40 hours per week, costing many employees. And if business costs rise, employers will find ways to trim expenses by cutting back in other areas, such as hiring.

The overtime push comes in the wake of an increasing flurry of changes to the president's signature health-care overhaul, which now is looking more like an albatross than the vote-getter the Democrats thought it would be. After repeatedly insisting that it was "settled law" that wouldn't be undermined by Republicans, Obama and his administration have proceeded to delay and dismantle key parts of it in an obvious effort to delay its cascading ill effects until after the November election. Many Democrats fear the election could cost them control of the U.S. Senate.

And, of course, this agenda is essentially an admission of failure on the part of Obama in the sixth year of his presidency. If his economic policies had spurred growth instead of tamping down economic recovery, he wouldn't have to pander with empty promises of extra pay to those lucky enough to have jobs. If his health-care "reform" had been as successful, effective and painless as he claimed it would be, he wouldn't be running away from it.